The advent of communication networks has greatly enhanced the availability of shared resources to the users. One category of shared resources, used extensively over communication networks is that of network printers. The network printers facilitate multiple users to print documents, over the communication network, without having to install a printer driver on their computing systems.
Recently developed technologies facilitate printing using an electronic mail (e-mail) system instead a computing system. In such cases, each printer is identified using a unique e-mail address. The printers are usually connected to a print server over the communication network. In operation, the users send a print job by sending an e-mail to the print server. The print server scans the e-mail for detecting the presence of viruses and spam. The scanned e-mail, along with its attachments is then forwarded to the printer, which is identified based on the e-mail address for printing. The printers can also connect to the user's computing systems to send data, such as to send a scanned copy of a document.